Japan does a great job of concealing poverty. During the day homeless individuals will clean up their belongings and make the area in where they slept look as if they had never been there. Despite this there are small indications throughout Japan that prove that poverty is in fact a problem. For example, there are hundreds of pairs of slippers on the front porch of a small home, proving that they are jamming a large amount of individuals into a room to sleep. A family was found dead in a house where they had no money to pay for heating. Japan was recently rated 6th in terms of the share of the population living in poverty. Even though they might hide the poverty well... it is still alive and prevalent.
Sarah Bilton
I wrote a piece on this same topic. The Japanese people are renowned for working an incredible number of hours each week and I feel I now better understand why. They not only have to provide for themselves, but often times relatives who are out of work because the government won't.
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